Restless Dead

Encounters between the Living and the Dead in Ancient Greece

Bibliographic Data

ID3939024
AuthorsHugh Parry (0000-0002-9077-5859, corresponding author)
Year1999
Volume53
Issue3/4
Pages339
Publication date1999-01-01
Open AccessNo
TypeREVIEW
Review ofRestless Dead: Encounters between the Living and the Dead in Ancient Greece, Sarah Iles Johnston, 2013
VenuePhoenix (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0031-8299 • E-ISSN: 1929-4883
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/1088993
OpenAlexW2030366370
LanguageEN
References cited1

During the archaic and classical periods, Greek ideas about the dead evolved in response to changing social and cultural conditions--most notably changes associated with the development of the polis, such as funerary legislation, and changes due to increased contacts with cultures of the ancient Near East. In Restless Dead, Sarah Iles Johnston presents and interprets these changes, using them to build a complex picture of the way in which the society of the dead reflected that of the living, expressing and defusing its tensions, reiterating its values and eventually becoming a source of significant power for those who knew how to control it. She draws on both well-known sources, such as Athenian tragedies, and newer texts, such as the Derveni Papyrus and a recently published lex sacra from Selinous. Topics of focus include the origin of the goes (the ritual practitioner who made interaction with the dead his specialty), the threat to the living presented by the ghosts of those who died dishonorably or prematurely, the development of Hecate into a mistress of ghosts and its connection to female rites of transition, and the complex nature of the Erinyes. Restless Dead culminates with a new reading of Aeschylus' Oresteia that emphasizes how Athenian myth and cult manipulated ideas about the dead to serve political and social ends

Ancient history · Archaeology · Dead body · Geography · Ancient Egypt and Archaeology · Classical Antiquity Studies · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies · History

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